The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus ) is one of the most curious birds that inhabit our country, both for its strange appearance and for its striking habits. However, this species is in danger of extinction and, although in recent years great efforts have been made for its conservation, its status is still critical.
Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente already alerted us to this at a time when there was hardly any ecological awareness, warning that human activity was harming this delicate species. Today we wanted to give a voice to this pioneer in the world of conservation, and that is why we have gone to the Salvat Encyclopedia of Iberian and European Fauna to recover some of the things that Felix taught us about bearded vultures .
1. Where does its scientific name come from?
Gypaetus is a mixture of two Greek words: “gyps”, which means vulture, and “aetós”, which means eagle. And it is that the appearance of the bearded vulture is, indeed, a mixture of both raptors. Second, barbatus refers to the beard that adorns the animal’s head.
2. Fly, fly!
The bearded vulture spends much longer in the air than other vultures, it can even be seen flying after dark. In addition, it does not usually wait for thermal currents to form to launch itself into flight, and it can do so in very bad weather conditions.
3. Bone Eater
As a scavenger bird that it is, the bearded vulture feeds on the remains of dead animals, and it does so when the rest of the carrion eaters (vultures, crows, eagles) have abandoned the feast and the remains of the corpse are already well dismembered. “The extremities – his favorite snack – and the large bones are transferred to the cracks or appropriate places to be crushed”, documents Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente.
4. The “bomber technique”
The name of this very special animal is no coincidence: to break the large bones on which it feeds, the bearded vulture drops them on rocky areas with sharp stones . These places are called breakaways or breakers, and our protagonist has a special ability to calculate the direction that his peculiar projectiles will take: he usually drops into a dive after launching them, so that he can almost see the success or failure of his mission break. -bones.
5. Air fights
Another of their forms of feeding consists of parasitizing other birds or, in other words: letting them hunt and, once the task is finished, removing their prey. And it is that the bearded vultures are almost invincible in the air : they are capable of unloading strong blows on their adversary with the end of the wing, they make him lose feathers and they chase him, standing on him and falling with their claws open.
6. Very busy parents
The reproductive cycle of bearded vultures is very long: it lasts eight months from the laying of the first egg to the independence of the chicks. This means that the slaughtered parents are only four months a year totally free from their reproductive tasks.
7. Rotation of nests
Each pair can have two to six nests in their territories . This is due to the fact that each year they occupy a different one, leaving the rest in a kind of “fallow”: in this way the high number of parasites caused by the prolonged presence of adults and chickens disappears.
Their huge nests are located in caves and very steep and inaccessible places in the walls of the mountains. They are huge: they can be up to 2 meters high .
Source: Salvat Encyclopedia of Iberian and European Fauna
